Senate reaches first budget in four years

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A Senate aide delivered a stack of documents in red tape being used as a prop during debate on the budget in the Senate.

By Jonathan Weisman
New York Times
March 23, 2013

WASHINGTON — And on the 1,448th day without one, the Senate Democrats finally brought forth a budget, and Republicans saw that was good — but first, they made them pay.

After four years of hectoring Democrats to put their political and fiscal priorities to paper, Republicans got their wish ­Friday and answered the effort with hundreds of amendments, some politically charged, others just odd, kicking off hours of laborious votes that sent the chamber into a marathon session before spring recess.

Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, stood vigil against any attempt by the United Nations to register US guns.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, went one better, demanding that the United States simply withdraw from the UN. Another amendment demanded that President Obama buy his health coverage on the new insurance exchanges being created under the new law. Still another would withhold the president’s pay if he were ever late again with his own budget.

And even if any of those were adopted, none of them would have any force of law.

‘‘We all know this will come to naught. The House will pass a budget. We’ll pass a budget, and we’ll never agree on it. There’s a lot of folderol about it,’’ said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. ‘‘It’s absolutely ridiculous.’’

After all the complaints about Democratic irresponsibility on the budget front, what unfolded Friday boiled down to spectacle, hundreds of amendments, all advisory only, and more tailored to the next campaign than to actual governance.

Even the name of the session — the ‘‘vote-a-rama’’ — belied how seriously senators took the exercise.

“Can’t hide from the vote-a-rama,’’ trumpeted a statement by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

In truth, a congressional budget accomplishes far less than advertised. It sets top-line limits for the Appropriations Committees to live within as they work on the real, binding spending bills, and it sometimes sets up fast-track procedures to consider changes to tax and entitlement laws.

Even those two functions can happen only if the Senate and House can reconcile their budget plans, a long shot this year.

Beyond that, all the details hung onto the document are largely meaningless bells and whistles that are ignored by the committees that actually draft legislation.

“Are there political games being played? Yes, there always will be,’’ said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who had filed 58 amendments by 5 p.m.

Most lawmakers expressed relief that finally, after so many years, the Senate was working on a budget. Its plan stands in stark contrast to the House plan that passed on Thursday.

It includes $100 billion for an upfront job creation and infrastructure program, instructions to expedite an overhaul of the tax code that would raise $975 billion over 10 years and could not be filibustered, and spending cuts and interest savings that totaled $975 billion, by Democratic calculations, and $646 billion in increases, by Republican accounting.

Even by Democratic estimates, the Senate plan would still leave a deficit of $566 billion in 2023, while adding $5.2 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade. The House plan ostensibly comes to balance that year.